Questions to Ask When Troubleshooting Email

Most email issues? User error—about 90–95% in my experience. Instead of sending the same questions over and over, I made a quick checklist to help spot common problems fast:

Are you connected to the internet?

Can you access webmail?

Are your username/password correct?

Are your settings (IMAP/SMTP) entered correctly?

Any full inbox or quota issues?

Are there any error messages?

Is your antivirus/firewall blocking email?

I might expand on each later, but this list catches most problems.

—Jessica Dunbar